1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for dispersing the load of a network, a method therefor, and a recording medium recorded with a program for executing this method, in data communications between a central computer and a plurality of remote nodes that are connected to this central computer via a broadband network. Particularly, this invention relates to a system for dispersing the load of a network, a method therefor, and a recording medium recorded with a program for executing this method, in a network in which a monitoring unit carries out polling by avoiding a local busy status of network traffic in order to monitor a plurality of remote nodes that are connected via a broadband network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nowadays, in the information community, data communications have been carried out between a central computer and a plurality of remote computers that are connected to this central computer via a network. Further, in recent years, high-speed transmission and the application of multimedia have become increasingly important in a broadband network that realizes communications between LANs. High-speed data communications including image data have become accordingly important.
As broadband networks, there are a B-ISDN (Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network) that is based on an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) for covering transmission speeds to a few M-bits/sec., a frame relay system for covering transmission speeds up to about 1.5 M-bits/sec., and a network that is based on an SMDS (Switched Multi-megabit Data Service) that is a connection-less data communication system for covering transmission speeds of a few M-bits/sec. to a few tens of M-bits/sec.
In a data communication system in which a plurality of remote computers are connected to a central computer via a broadband network, the central computer monitors the plurality of remote computers as follows. The central computer transmits mails to the plurality of remote computers, and the remote computers receive these mails and send return mails to the central computer. When the central computer carries out polling to the plurality of remote computers, the data communications are usually carried out according to the IP (Internet Protocol).
However, in the above data communication system, there is the following problem. The central computer does not know through which communication route of the broadband network the central computer carries out data communications with the remote computers. For monitoring or other purpose, the host computer as a mail transmission origin sequentially transmits data to the plurality of remote computers that are the mail arrival destinations, according to the IP addresses. Then, the central computer receives return mails from these remote computers. During this period, there may occur local traffic congestion in the communication routes within the broadband network. As these routes become busy, there may occur time periods when data communications, used for other business, will be unavailable.